The Tribune

By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

GLASGOW, Scotland — Chef de mission Roy Colebrooke gave Team Bahamas a B for their performances at the 20th Commonwealth Games.

Three medals - a pair of silver and a bronze - put the Bahamas in a two-way tie for 24th place overall with Samoa in the final medal standings that was led by England with 174, followed by Australia with 137.

Arianna Vanderpool-Wallace, 24, got the Bahamas on the chart when she came from a fourth place in the 50m freestyle for the silver - the first ever in swimming for the Bahamas at the games - in the 50m butterfly.

That was followed by a bronze - the second ever for the Bahamas - in the men’s 400m hurdles. The first came from former national record holder Greg Rolle in the 1978 games.

And on the final night of competition in athletics where the Bahamas placed all four teams in the final for the first time at the games, the men’s 4 x 400m relay team, anchored by the come-from-behind effort by Chris ‘Fireman’ Brown, got the other silver. The other members of the team were LaToy Williams, Michael Mathieu and Alonzo Russell. Andretti Bain made a contribution in the preliminaries.

“I rate Team Bahamas with a B because a lot of the persons in the various disciplines came with a certain level of training and I am sure that they all can do better in some aspects,” Musgrove said.

“We must congratulate the persons who medal. We had some athletes who did some tremendous performances, but the competition over here was very, very tough. We excelled in more than one discipline, which was very great and we did personal best performances in some of those disciplines as well.”

Musgrove, a vice president of the Bahamas Olympic Committee, who were responsible for the team, also commended all of the coaches and personnel who travelled to Glasgow to work with the athletes.

“For us in the BOC, this is just our starting plan in order to get to Rio,” said Musgrove of the 2016 Olympic Games,

“When we get to Rio, we want more disciplines and with six disciplines here, we would like to match that and even have more.

“That’s when we know that the NOC (National Olympic Committee) of a country and their NS (National Sports) are working together to ensure that the sports in their countries reach the highest level, which is the Olympic Games.”

In their quest for even greater success in 2016, Musgrove said the ground work has to be put in place to ensure that the athletes are all in better conditioning to be able to compete at this level.

“Some of the athletes were not at their maximum potential, but again, these games showed exactly what type of training these individuals will have to do in order to compete at this level of competition.

“We saw some of the best competition in the world at these games.”

As the president of the Bahamas Cycling Federation, Musgrove said some of the competitors that his cyclists competed against in both the individual time trials and the gruelling road race came right from competing in the Tour de France.

“So in order for our guys to compete with them, we have to do more training camps and that’s not just for the cyclists, but for all of our athletes,” he said. “It was purposely done for our cyclists to come to the games because, except for Chad Albury, it’s a young cadre that they can improve so they know what to do when they go back home.”

Now that the games are over, with the closing ceremonies held on Sunday, Musgrove said the entire Team Bahamas should be out of Glasgow and back into their various destinations by today.